3 Inbound Marketing Facts You Might Not Know

On this blog, we talk a lot about Inbound Marketing. Inbound marketing has revolutionized the way we speak to marketing clients about lead generation.

Did you know inbound leads cost 61% less than leads from outbound marketing methods like telemarketing or direct mail? Logically, it makes sense to at least use components of inbound marketing in your lead generation to complement your overall marketing strategy.

Here, we share 3 other interesting facts about inbound marketing.

Photo: Quino Al on Unsplash

#1: Leads that contact you or download something on your website are most likely not ready to buy, yet.

63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy. (Source: Marketing Donut)

Application: Be patient with your inbound leads and Awareness stage leads. Just because of the fact that they found your website via Google Search or social media, doesn’t mean that they’re ready to buy. And they may not be ready to buy for a long time.

Hence, your inbound marketing programmes must be robust and flexible enough to anticipate these timelines. Ensure that inbound leads are sent engaging and helpful content regularly. More importantly, you need to attempt to re-engage those leads who have stopped reading your content.

Contacting your prospective and existing customers consistently builds trust and professionalism and keeps ‘top of mind’ awareness of your company.

#2: Inbound Marketing is not Content Marketing

Just as we’ve covered in our previous blog post about misconceptions about inbound marketing, Inbound Marketing is not Content Marketing.

Content marketing is only one part of the inbound marketing puzzle. To succeed, inbound marketing also requires:

· A way to capture contacts

· Forms to deliver content to leads

· Landing pages and call to actions

· CRM integration

· Email marketing integration

· Marketing automation

· Social media publishing

#3: Long form content tends to rank better on Google

Quick Sprout found the average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page on Google, the more content each web page has.

Firstly, let’s clear up some definitions of word length. Long form content is posts or content assets that exceed 2,000 words, whereas short form content can be as brief as 500 words and remain effective.

This was an interesting find. We usually think shorter blog posts rank better as it’s easier to read.

However, if the content is readable and useful, people will spend more time on it. People will also link to it more often, resulting in stronger SEO performance.

However, does this mean that you should always pad out your blog posts to make sure it’s as long as possible?

Not really. The answer is ‘it depends’.

Think about your marketing objectives. If your product is more technical, expensive or you’re in the B2B marketing space (like us!), you’ll probably need to writer longer copy to explain all its nuances.

The best method is to test what length is appropriate for your target audience and the marketing objective you wish to achieve with that particular piece of content.

Not sure what to do now with that information? Subscribe to our blog for more information on Inbound Marketing.